At the risk of sounding like this (18 seconds) - Players know they want an easier way in, a better way to learn and understand and improve; however giving them a tool that others have provided "just because" isn't a good way to do this. For example - alternative communities have it set up where if a section requires bhop; you can hold down your jump key and it'll bounce for you perfectly without having ahop available the entire time which I feel is fine considering it can be incredibly frustrating if you're hopping and server desync causes you to screw up. But to be able to hold enter and just hop isn't going to do anyone any good; even if every other server has it. If we were every other server we'd run that same terrible for-purchase script that every other server runs with guns, knives and a good 2GB of downloads. To clarify, I'm not averse to the addition of such a feature. However we have to do this properly and to the benefit of the player, not the detriment. If players are having a hard time getting into Surf, we need to work out a better way to introduce them as opposed to "Just hold jump".
But considering we're still waiting on the bonus system 1.5 years on (as it's complex), it seems unlikely we'll see such an intricate feature like that added any time soon. I imagine a tickbox enabling autohop without setting times would be much simpler, but that's your call and ultimately how much work you want to put in. Going back to the OP, players are leaving because they see there's no autohop. I doubt much would fix that except allowing an autohop (with restrictions, either in zones or always enabled). We're not in a position to recondition the entire surf playerbase, we can either conform to the standard set by everyone else and welcome these players, or reject them at cost to player numbers, ultimately that's the decision.
I agree we're not in a position to re-condition the playerbase; however the aim is to give the best of both worlds without compromising. It genuinely wouldn't be that hard to add autohop zones as the current area trigger system can easily allow for such a thing to work. As it currently stands we're still going to lose a percentage of those players; especially given that we host very few maps with bhop as it is.
There is no magical aid that can make you better at surfing without putting in effort yourself, whether a player has an extra 1000 velocity or not. The only difference between having the extra speed and not is the ability to butcher their strafes more without completely losing all speed from one inexperienced move. I'll agree it's a poor crutch, but in the sense of crutches you generally don't have very many quality options. This toggle would give players a little extra room for error where they need it until they can better understand what is working on a ramp to give them even more speed and what is not. Also, in the sense of wanting it just to have it, this is also true. There are players that will go to another server if they don't see autohop based on a self-formed stigma that servers lacking autohop are outdated; however, like I said previously, they're probably 12 and have no taste.
If people are going to claim this server is a "true" skill surf server then you might as well do that because KSF (the most skilled surf community) does this.
I believe KSF have partial hop, ie areas where it's active. But I'd like to point out that I've disagreed with various things KSF do in the past and they don't influence any of the things we do. So then we generally agree there's an issue, and that it's a poor crutch. If this is the case; why not instead work together to come up with a better solution that allows for newer players to get the best experience? Because while ahop can provide a false belief they're getting a better experience, it really doesn't enhance it at all.
Well I believe you misunderstand, I don't believe there's an issue with autohop and I do believe it can enhance new surfers gameplay by giving them more room for errors; however, we agree the crutch is poor but not for the fact that it is unhelpful, rather there isn't a better option to my knowledge. Perhaps there could be some new feature developed to enrich the server even farther without adding autohop that would pull in the same audience we're currently after, but with the work load already on your back I don't see this coming to fruition anytime soon without strenuous amounts of work. Not that I would want to be counted out on developing new ideas if it did come down to that, but I don't see it realistically making sense for where we're at.
I'm not asking you to directly develop an idea; at the end of the day that's what myself and Santamon aim to do. It's also a case that certain features take longer due to lack of interest, waiting on another system or some other reason. That said however it's long been a frustration of mine that there's a steep curve to Surf and I've worked on ways to alleviate that - but in this case what we need is something to explain and show better as opposed to a magical pogo stick that doesn't improve a new players experience; nor does it really actually allow for a greater margin of error. I'm not trying to purposely roadblock something for the sake of doing so, there's been an autohop script on my PC for the longest time (which I've actually enabled today for Admins to test) because for a long time I did consider it to be a decent option for new players; however I realised that at the end of the day it doesn't teach the player anything other than they can press a button, hop a bit and then get a slightly faster start which doesn't alleviate any of the frustration and doesn't show what a player is doing right or wrong. If a player (who is beyond a new player) whom is experienced only considers surfing on a server with ahop; then something else is the issue there as a whole, one maybe that can't really be solved.
Won't affect scroll hops; as this is the server telling the client when it should jump, not the other way around.
I would only like to see it when prespeeding in zones gets fixed (probably won't happen.). Map times are already majorly dependent on who has the best prehop, what if everyone has autohop? it would be a mess. Don't make it so u have to gay your runs to get SR's.
I agree but they would be taking out the option to have times when auto hopping if my info is correct. Yes times are majorly important but for the beginners and ones who are just starting out and are stuck on let's say lore stage 8 then they won't learn how to beat the map or study it. But that's just my opinion so thanks.
Some great discussion from this thread, the outcome is laid out here: https://bbroleplay.co.uk/forums/index.php?threads/upcoming-feature-autohop-zones.15607/